A viral Facebook post asking originators to explain their compensation packages generated over 500 comments. It also revealed that most LOs can't clearly articulate how they're actually paid 😟.

In today’s edition of The Mortgage Scoop, we’ll dive into the murky world of commission models. Plus, UWM’s latest earnings & the future of the company, trying to make sense of Better’s mortgage stablecoin, how to attend two mortgage conferences simultaneously & more.

(🙏 If you like what you’re reading, tell a fellow mortgage junkie to sign up here.)

NMP broke down the comp structures at several major wholesale & retail platforms. Figures like "275 bps" or "100% comp" are staples of LO recruiting, but they rarely reflect the fine print. Geneva Financial CEO Aaron VanTrojen put it bluntly — originators who believe they're earning 275 bps gross are often netting less than 140, or as little as 50 bps, once concessions, tech fees, admin charges, and upline overrides are factored in.

Each platform has its own flavor of complexity. NEXA Lending's model routes a portion of comp into a "Growth & Marketing Ledger" that LOs can only access through submitted expense receipts, signed tax waivers, and an active recruiter downline (shades of KW, eXP). COO Jason duPont framed it as a pathway to 100% compensation; though critics call it opaque by design. Per NMP, under NEXA's standard model, an LO on a $500K loan nets roughly $11,000 after a 25 bps funding deduction & 12% corporate margin — w/ that margin redistributed across multiple upline levels in a structure the company's own leadership acknowledged is "probably the most complicated" in the space.

Pure broker shop Edge Home Finance pitches simplicity — a flat 275 bps minus a $995 per-file fee & a 10% commission reduction. Chief Growth Officer Tom Ahles insists the plan is crystal clear. But NMP reported that ex-employees allege the 10% reduction quietly funds employer payroll tax obligations, which, if true, would violate IRS code. Ahles disputes that characterization, arguing the 10% defines what the commission is, rather than deducting from wages already earned.

Client Direct Mortgage, whose founder Ramon Walker sparked the original Facebook thread, posts the cleanest net payout in NMP’s analysis — roughly $13,106 on a $500,000 loan under a flat-fee model. Even so, Eric Mitchell, a former executive, raised concerns about fee increases & payroll consistency, allegations Walker pushed back on directly. (Mitchell is now an exec at NEXA.) 

The article also digs into W-2 vs. 1099 misclassification risks, recruiting bonus structures w/ hidden disqualifiers, & whether platform infrastructure promises actually materialize after an LO signs on. It’s a very thorough article; I highly recommend you give it a read. 

Princeton Mortgage’s Rich Weidel has been beating the “LOs don’t have the full picture on their comp” drum for a while now. In his latest Substack post, Weidel says it's not that complicated for LOs to benchmark themselves: comp as a percentage of revenue "is the scoreboard. Not your basis points. Not your volume. Your share of the revenue your loans generate. It's the profit margin of you. Don't fall into the basis points trap. That's a compliance metric." 

It all boils down to gross revenue. Weidel writes: 

The MBA tells us that the Gross Revenue in 2025 was $13,006 per loan or 366 bps with an average loan size of $355,547. The average branch margin is around 200 bps. That means the average corporate margin is 166 bps (366 - 200) or $5,902 per loan.

Anyway, you can make your own assumptions, but I’ll use the comparably low $4,000 corporate revenue (fee income, allocations, margin, secondary) for this example to calculate the Gross Revenue:

So 155 bps originator earnings equates to 37% of the Gross Revenue (155 bps earnings / 421 bps gross revenue). Hey, that’s 10% points better than the average of 27.7% according to the MBA. But it’s a lot worse than the pitch would make it seem.

Earning 155 bps on 300 Bps of GROSS REVENUE is bad ass.
Earning 155 bps on 421 Bps of GROSS REVENUE is marginally better than average.

If you sell higher rates, you can earn more money. That is arithmetically undeniable. But ripping off your borrowers (421 bps gross revenue) is not, in my considered opinion, a great way to earn a living.

Originators fall for this because they didn’t understand their own economics, and because they were playing a game without knowing the rules.

Wanna hear a joke? What did the mortgage exec say about stablecoins? “The only thing in this industry that’s actually stable… is my borrower’s credit score right before they go buy a car.” Badum-pah! 😁

That was lame, sorry! But hey, maybe you saw the news that Better is launching a $500M stablecoin via Sky? Better intends to integrate into the Sky ecosystem through Obex, a Sky-focused incubator administered by Framework Ventures, and backed by a $2.5B commitment from Sky. Vishal Garg said Better will be the first conforming mortgage originator to deploy tokenized capital at institutional scale, lowering funding costs for Better, Tinman partners & customers “by over 100 bps per year.” 

Check out this quote 🎼 from Garg:

“The full realization of our plan will translate into potentially sub 5% interest rates for Better’s customers when the rest of the industry is charging over 6%, in addition to significantly lowering the capital requirements for Better to finance its future growth plans as it scales from $500 mm per month to over $1 billion per month in originations in 2026. All this while providing token holders with yields well above current Stablecoin yield or rewards with superior credit risk. We’re just getting started.”

I’ll be real w/ you: I don’t fully understand the nuances of crypto (who wants to buy my NFTs? 🦧) & stablecoins. It sounds like Better is saying they’re replacing traditional warehouse lines & the associated intermediaries to shave 100 bps, even though they’re ultimately still selling most loans to the GSEs? What do you think? Share your thoughts w/ me at [email protected].

UWM no longer has time for Wall Street analysts, apparently. Mat Ishbia said UWM’s business is far too complex to be explained in a Q&A format w/ analysts. Maybe he got frustrated by explaining MSR markdowns too many times? 

Anyway, the earnings show another strong year in ‘25. Origination volume totaled $163.5B w/ a gross margin at 116 bps.  Net income fell to $244M in ‘25, down from $329M in ‘24. In Q4, UWM produced $50B in loans, taking full advantage of a better refi environment. 

There’s always shiny stuff happening at UWM: A pending acquisition of Two Harbors to power servicing (arguably now necessary in a post-Rocket-Cooper world), the Bilt partnership that should give brokers more stickiness w/ borrowers.

What people don’t see is the core, attritional work behind the scenes: